Sony CFO Doesn’t Deny Possibility Of PS5 Price Increase

Sony recently published their financial reports for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, and though there came positive news such as a total of 21.7 million total PS5 units sold, overall, the video games division of the company, obviously centered around PlayStation, reported declines year-over-year. Sales overall were down 11.7% and operating income down 30.5%. As transcribed by VGC, when CFO Hiroki Totoki was asked if they were considering raising the PS5’s price, they stated that “at this point in time there is nothing specific I can share with you about prices.”

The previously mentioned declines were mostly attributed to a decrease in sales of first-party and third-party titles, as well as their acquisition of Destiny developer Bungie; Bungie was sold for a reported $3.6 billion USD. Furthermore, Q1 2022 didn’t see the release of any major PlayStation exclusive. Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7, both released in the prior fiscal year, in February and March respectively. Though the games likely continued to sell into April, many of a game’s sales come in those first few weeks.

This refusal to comment is raising more concerns than usual, as it comes off Meta’s recent announcement that they’d be upping the price of their Meta Quest 2 for $100 USD due to rising manufacturing costs; an unusual move that had seldom been seen in the gaming industry, and left consumers frustrated.

Manufacturing and shipping costs, specifically for electronics, have been on the rise since 2020, and it hasn’t slowed down since. Reportedly, current geopolitical conflicts are exacerbating the issue, chip making companies are seeing high demand and little supply, and are thus raising their own prices out of pure necessity. Therefore, it’s becoming difficult for electronics companies to keep their prices steady.

It would be quite unprecedented, at least in the modern console era, to see a major entity like PlayStation raise prices on their console after release, and would likely be met with a lot of backlash. That’s probably a situation Sony would like to avoid, and either way, PlayStation makes most of its money via software sales (games and subscription services), not hardware sales (consoles). However, Totoki could have denied any possibility of this happening, but decided instead to be unspecific.